This article presents a sobering view of the discipline of cognitive neuropsychology as practiced over the last three or four decades. Our judgment is that, although the study of abnormal cognition resulting from brain injury or disease in previously normal adults has produced a catalogue of fascinating and highly selective deficits, it has yielded relatively little advance in understanding how the brain accomplishes its cognitive business. We question the wisdom of the following three “choices” in mainstream cognitive neuropsychology: (a) single‐case (...) methodology, (b) dissociation between functions as the most important source of evidence, and (c) a central goal of diagramming the functional architecture of cognition rather than specifying how its components work. These choices may all stem from an excessive commitment to strict and fine‐grained modularity. Although different brain regions are undoubtedly specialized for different functions, we argue that parallel and interactive processing is a better assumption about cognitive processing. The essential goal of specifying representations and processes can, we claim, be significantly assisted by computational modeling which, by its very nature, requires such specification. (shrink)

Intersectional feminist scholars emphasize how overlapping systems of oppression structure gender inequality, but in focusing on the gendered, classed, and racialized bases of stratification, many often overlook disability as an important social category in determining economic outcomes. This is a significant omission given that disability severely limits opportunities and contributes to cumulative disadvantage. We draw from feminist disability and intersectional theories to account for how disability intersects with gender, race, and education to produce economic insecurity. The findings from our analyses (...) of 2015 American Community Survey data provide strong empirical support for hierarchies of disadvantage, where women and racial minority groups with disabilities and less education experience the highest poverty levels, report the lowest total income, and have a greater reliance on sources outside the labor market for economic security. By taking disability into account, our study demonstrates how these multiple characteristics lead to overlapping oppressions that become embedded and reproduced within the larger social structure. (shrink)

This book articulates a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of Jew hatred as a metaphysical aspect of the human soul. Proceeding from the Jewish thinking that the anti-Semites oppose, David Patterson argues that anti-Semitism arises from the most ancient of temptations, the temptation to be as God, and thus to flee from an absolute accountability to and for the other human being.

We (Patterson & Plaut, 2009) argued that cognitive neuropsychology has had a limited impact on cognitive science due to a nearly exclusive reliance on (a) single‐case studies, (b) dissociations in cognitive performance, and (c) shallow, box‐and‐arrow theorizing, and we advocated adopting a case‐series methodology, considering associations as well as dissociations, and employing explicit computational modeling in studying “how the brain does its cognitive business.” In reply, Coltheart (2010) claims that our concern is misplaced because cognitive neuropsychology is concerned only (...) with studying the mind, in terms of its “functional architecture,” without regard to how this is implemented in the brain. In this response, we do not dispute his characterization of cognitive neuropsychology as it has typically been practiced over the last 40 years, but we suggest that our understanding of brain structure and function has advanced to the point where studying the mind without regard to the brain is unwise and perpetuates the field’s isolation. (shrink)

Among the topics explored in this book are ways of viewing the soul, the relation between body and soul, environmentalist thought, the phenomenon of torture, and the philosophical and theological warrants for genocide. Presenting an analysis of abstract modes of thought that have contributed to genocide, the book argues that a Jewish model of concrete thinking may inform our understanding of the abstractions that can lead to genocide. Its aim is to draw upon distinctively Jewish categories of thought to demonstrate (...) how the conceptual defacing of the other human being serves to promote the murder of peoples, and to suggest a way of thinking that might help prevent genocide. (shrink)

Introduction : the last of the German Jewish philosophers -- The philosophical roots of the Holocaust -- The Jewish encounter with modern philosophy -- The matter of singularity -- From Auschwitz to Jerusalem -- Tikkun haolam -- Closing reflections.

This article argues that the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas does not fall into the categories of postmodern thought; rather, it represents a fundamentally Jewish way of thinking that, in many ways, is opposed to postmodernism. The paper begins with a consideration of what makes Jewish thought Jewish and explains how and why the thinking of Levinas is defined by distinctively Jewish categories. It addresses his stance toward Torah and other sacred Jewish texts, as well as his view of creation and (...) the Creator. After establishing what makes Jewish thought Jewish, the text examines three key concepts in the philosophy of Levinas and explains how and why these concepts are distinctively Jewish: they are the concepts of the holy, of the face, and of time. Finally, drawing upon the Hebrew language and sacred texts, the paper shows that these key concepts distinguish Levinas as a Jewish thinker whose views fall firmly within the Jewish tradition. /// O presente artigo defende, antes de mais, que a filosofia de Emmanuel Levinas de forma alguma se pode reduzir às categorias do pensamento pós-moderno; pelo contrário, o autor pretende demonstrar até que ponto este é um modo fundamentalmente judaico de pensar, um pensamento que, de diversos modos, se opõe ao assim chamado pós-modemismo. O artigo começa por estabelecer aquilo que faz com que de um determinado pensamento se possa dizer que ele é de matriz judaica, explicando assim também de que modo o pensamento de Levinas está definido por categorias distintamente judaicas. O artigo considera a posição do filósofo em relação à Tora e outros textos sagrados do Judaísmo, bem como a sua interjiretação da criação e do Criador. Assim, depois de estabelecer aquilo que faz com que seja propriamente judaico o pensamento judaico, o texto examina três dos conceitos fundamentais na filosofia de Levinas e explica porque é que estes conceitos são, de facto, tipicamente judaicos. Trata-se, com efeito, dos conceitos de Santo, de Rosto, e de Tempo. Finalmente, argumentando a partir da língua hebraica e dos textos sagrados, o artigo reafirma de que modo estes conceitos-chave distinguem Levinas como pensador cujas interpretações se inserem, sem mais, dentro da tradição judaica. (shrink)

Introduction : the last of the German Jewish philosophers -- The philosophical roots of the Holocaust -- The Jewish encounter with modern philosophy -- The matter of singularity -- From Auschwitz to Jerusalem -- Tikkun haolam -- Closing reflections.

What makes Jewish thought Jewish? This book proceeds from a view of the Hebrew language as the holy tongue; such a view of Hebrew is, indeed, a distinctively Jewish view as determined by the Jewish religious tradition. Because language shapes thought and Hebrew is the foundational language of Jewish texts, this book explores the idea that Jewish thought is distinguished by concepts and categories rooted in Hebrew. Drawing on more than 300 Hebrew roots, the author shows that Jewish thought employs (...) Hebrew concepts and categories that are altogether distinct from those that characterize the Western speculative tradition. Among the key categories that shape Jewish thought are holiness, divinity, humanity, prayer, responsibility, exile, dwelling, gratitude, and language itself. While the Hebrew language is central to the investigation, the reader need not have a knowledge of Hebrew in order to follow it. Essential reading for students and scholars of Judaism, this book will also be of value to anyone interested in the categories of thinking that form humanity's ultimate concerns. (shrink)

Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future envisioned knowledge systems might need to look like and how we might get there. Findings suggest that envisioned future systems will need (...) to be much more collaborative, open, diverse, egalitarian, and able to work with values and systemic issues. They will also need to go beyond producing knowledge about our world to generating wisdom about how to act within it. To get to envisioned systems we will need to rapidly scale methodological innovations, connect innovators, and creatively accelerate learning about working with intractable challenges. We will also need to create new funding schemes, a global knowledge commons, and challenge deeply held assumptions. To genuinely be a creative force in supporting longevity of human and non-human life on our planet, the shift in knowledge systems will probably need to be at the scale of the enlightenment and speed of the scientific and technological revolution accompanying the second World War. This will require bold and strategic action from governments, scientists, civic society and sustained transformational intent. (shrink)

RAID-II is a high-bandwidth, network-attached storage server designed and implemented at the University of California at Berkeley. In this paper, we measure the performance of RAID-II and evaluate various architectural decisions made during the design process. We first measure the end-to-end performance of the system to be approximately 20 MB/s for both disk array reads and writes. We then perform a bottleneck analysis by examining the performance of each individual subsystem and conclude that the disk subsystem limits performance. By adding (...) a custom interconnect board with a high-speed memory and bus system and parity engine, we are able to achieve a performance speedup of 8 to 15 over a comparative system using only off-the-shelf hardware. (shrink)

In Altered Sensations: Rudolph Koenig’s Acoustical Workshop in Nineteenth-Century Paris, David Pantalony achieves the difficult goal of balancing technical detail and historical narrative in his account of Rudolph Koenig and the nineteenth-century Parisian scientific instrument trade. The Parisian instrument making trade, particularly that of acoustical instruments, was at a high point in the mid-nineteenth century. Chief among scientific instrument makers was Rudolph Koenig (1832-1901), whose atelier at 30 Hautefeuille was at once an artisanal studio, a laboratory, a workshop and (...) a showroom. The negotiations necessary for one building, and one person, to channel such different activities is one of the main themes of Pantalony’s book. Pantalony shows that Koenig’s atelier was central to disputes surrounding the creation of the “modern soundscape” (p. 170). Debates regarding analytic versus holistic conceptions of sound, “objective” visual versus “subjective” by-ear modes of perception and measurement, and experimental versus theoretical results are all prominent in the text, and all framed by the different, but not disparate, functions of Koenig’s atelier; the building acts as a multi-faceted lens through which Pantalony considers Koenig and his instruments in their artistic, intellectual, commercial and social contexts. (shrink)

This celebratory Festschrift dedicated to Charles Kahn comprises some 23 articles by friends, former students and colleagues, many of whom first presented their papers at the international "Presocratics and Plato" Symposium in his honor. The conference was organized and sponsored by the HYELE Institute for Comparative Studies, Parmenides Publishing, and Starcom AG, with endorsements from the International Plato Society, and the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania. While Kahn's work reaches far beyond the Presocratics and (...) Plato, it is in these subject areas that the distinction of his scholarship has come to be regarded as virtually unrivaled. The articles contributed to this volume are by some of the most renowned scholars working on these topics today, their breadth and depth bearing witness to his profound impact and influence on the discipline of Ancient Greek Philosophy._ Charles Kahn taught Classics and Philosophy at Columbia University from 1957 to 1965, and has since been teaching in the Philosophy Department of the University of Pennsylvania. He spent a year as Visiting Professor at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, and had additional Visiting Fellowships at Balliol College, Oxford and Clare Hall, Cambridge, and a term as Visiting Professor at Harvard. He is the recipient of several prestigious research grants, from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2000 he was elected Fellow of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of _Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology, The Verb “Be” in Ancient Greek, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, and Essays on Being_. His latest book,_Plato and the Post-Socratic Dialogue_, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. _ Contributors: Julia Annas Sarah Broadie Lesley Brown Tomás Calvo-Martínez Diskin Clay John M. Dillon Dorothea Frede Arnold Hermann Carl A. Huffman Enrique Hülsz Piccone D. M. Hutchinson Paul Kalligas Vassilis Karasmanis Aryeh Kosman Anthony A. Long Richard McKirahan Susan Sauvé Meyer Alexander P.D.Mourelatos Satoshi Ogihara Richard Patterson Christopher J. Rowe David Sedley Richard Sorabji. (shrink)

This volume is a Festschrift dedicated to Charles Kahn comprised of more than 20 papers presented at the conference "Presocratics and Plato: Festschrift Symposium in Honor of Charles Kahn", 3-7 June 2009. The conference was held at the European Cultural Center of Delphi, Greece, and was organized and sponsored by the HYELE Institute for Comparative Studies and Parmenides Publishing, with endorsement from the International Plato Society, and the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania. Contributors: Julia (...) Annas - University of Arizona; Sarah Broadie - University of St. Andrews; Lesley Brown - University of Oxford; Tomás Calvo-Martínez - Universidad Complutense de Madrid; Diskin Clay - Duke University; John M. Dillon - Trinity College, Dublin; Dorothea Frede - Humbolt University, Berlin; Arnold Hermann - HYELE Institute for Comparative Studies; Carl A. Huffman - DePauw University; Enrique Hülsz Piccone - Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico; D.M. Hutchinson - St. Olaf College; Paul Kalligas - National and Kapodistrian University, Athens; Vassilis Karasmanis - National Technical University, Athens; Aryeh Kosman - Haverford College; Anthony A. Long - University of California, Berkeley; Richard McKirahan - Pomona College; Susan Sauvé Meyer - University of Pennsylvania; Alexander P.D. Mourelatos - University of Texas at Austin; Satoshi Ogihara - Tohoku University, Japan; Richard Patterson - Emory University; Christopher J. Rowe - Durham University; David Sedley - University of Cambridge; Richard Sorabji - University of Oxford. (shrink)

Whether or not deflationism is compatible with truth-conditional theories of meaning has often been discussed in very broad terms. This paper only focuses on Davidsonian semantics and Brandom's anaphoric deflationism and defends the claim that these are perfectly compatible. Critics of this view have voiced several objections, the most prominent of which claims that it involves an unacceptable form of circularity. The paper discusses how this general objection applies to the case of anaphoric deflationism and Davidsonian semantics and evaluates different (...) ways of responding to it (Williams 1999, Horisk 2008 and Lance 1997). Then, three further objections to the compatibility of these theories are assessed and eventually dismissed (Horisk 2007, Patterson 2005 and Collins 2002). It is shown how these considerations shed light on core issues of the debate. (shrink)

Our society’s professions, including the health professions, have long overlooked the possibility that one might learn something valuable about one’s own profession’s ethics by studying the ethics of other professions. Reflecting on the preceding article by Ritwik, Patterson, and Alfonzo-Echeverri, one can identify important similarities between dentistry’s professional ethics and the ethics of the other health professions. But there are also important differences between these professions’ ethics that should prompt reflection on the reasons for these differences, perhaps challenge something (...) that has been taken for granted in one’s own profession, and in any case facilitate better mutual understanding and more effective inter-professional collaboration. (shrink)

Pattersons work is ultimately an investigation into postmodern hermeneutical theories. She proceeds by applying Wittgensteins distinction between languages ability to describe but never justify matters of empirical fact to theological questions raised by later twentieth century thought. Patterson realizes that as speaking persons we inevitably play language-games, and it is precisely these games which allow us to relate to other persons, both human and divine. In exploring such a line of thought, she clearly sees her own work as the (...) pursuit of a more helpful Wittgenstein, the goal of which is to bring many voices together to construct a way that enables Christianity to hold on to an unwavering realism while simultaneously admitting that all use of human language is inevitably fragmentary and idolatrous. As she rightly asks, For who but God is able to comprehend the whole?. In other words, how can Christianity maintain the absoluteness of the Divine amid the contingency and flux of human experience as manifested in temporal relationships, in language? It is unfortunate that from the start Patterson provides no clear definition of how she will use the term postmodernism, pays no attention to its roots in post-Cartesian thought, and, in limiting her treatment to the linguistic, overlooks elemental critiques against modernity such as, the claim to power and the deification of progress. (shrink)

Review of David Patterson, Portraits: The Hasidic Legacy of Elie Wiesel.